CEOs are rethinking their global manufacturing footprints, locating plants and R&D facilities as close as possible to major customers and preparing for a new wave of technologies that could transform the shop floor. To seize the future, they must persuade their organizations to experiment at a time when risk control is paramount.
Several western companies have made headlines by “reshoring” manufacturing jobs previously offshored to countries with lower labor costs. The new jobs require higher skill sets than the ones they replace, however. As US-based Master Lock discovered, finding workers to fill them is a challenge.
The equation for deciding where to locate manufacturing on either side of the Pacific Ocean is shifting. With the opening of China decades ago, the labor cost differential was so big, and communications had improved so dramatically, that you could make a lot of money. The cost differential was anywhere from 30-to-1 to 100-to-1 in terms of labor costs. I could shift production to China, and even if it took three times as many people, or ten times as many, I was still ahead. We saw dramatic decreases in costs for sneakers, electronics and many other products. Massive numbers of jobs were offshored.
SIR JAMES DYSON is the founder and chief executive of Dyson Ltd., makers of the Dyson Ball line of bagless vacuums, plus blade-free fans, near-instantaneous hand dryers and other innovative products.
China is trying to climb the technology ladder but has developed only a handful of globally competitive manufacturing companies. As labor-intensive jobs leave China, Chinese managers are responding to soaring labor costs at home by automating their factories and acquiring foreign companies with crucial management know-how.
3D printing – a technology that builds products layer by layer rather than milling or forming them from metal or plastic – is beginning to earn its place in everyday use at some of the world’s largest manufacturers. As the technology becomes more powerful and less expensive, the potential to locate small factories everywhere for everything from automobiles to fashion, even for a market of one, becomes a distinct possibility.
3D-printed couture is disrupting the fashion world, dotting the most sophisticated fashion runways with designs that are stunning. Fantastical. Memorable.
The technology used to create these dresses is as disruptive as the designs themselves. Fashion houses can output a thousand identical dresses, or make a few keystrokes and render each one an original.
Vice Chairman, Chief Executive Officer
Dassault Systèmes
For centuries, we have been struggling with shaping matter. Today, imagination takes the lead in the art of making: imagination is the mold for matter. That is the power of 3D technology and additive manufacturing: ships in a bottle, making possible the impossible, the addition of dream and reality; a new horizon in the history of manufacturing, and very good news for industrial talents, social innovators, and creative makers.
